What: A fundraiser for Why'd You Stop Me? with a raffle, live performances, dancing and refreshments

Cost: $80

Where: La Lune Palace

When: 2 p.m. Aug. 10

Tickets: wysm.org

Changing minds, changing lives

Jasmine Simpson, now 18, attended Wilson High School when she saw the Why'd You Stop Me? presentation. Afterward, she shared the following essay with Jason Lehman, the program's creator and executive director.

I used to Hate you

Now I realize that you just try to protect me

I used to despise you because you took my family

I used to think that all you did was ruin peoples lives and eat donuts

but the truth is...

Every day you risk your life for ungrateful people

who Hate you and get in your face

When all your doing is just trying to keep them safe

I used to Hate you, but now...

Now I just want to be like you.

– Jasmine Simpson, May 2012

It was a situation that could have turned ugly.

A young man, still a child, on the run from police barricaded himself in a garage in central Long Beach. Police suspected him of shooting another kid, a young Latino, and they prepared to burst in with the police dog.

But rather than risk his own life or those of the responding officers, the young man surrendered. The boy, a former Beach High School student, recognized one of the responding officers, Jason Lehman, as he stepped outside.

“The first thing he told me was, ‘It’s because of your program that I surrendered,’” Lehman said in a recent interview. “To be able to see that is amazing because who knows what could have happened?”

Lehman, 33, has made it his mission to bridge the gap between police and community members who often misunderstand or mistrust authority. To that end, in 2012 Lehman created Why’d You Stop Me?, an interactive program that puts at-risk students and other civilians in a police officer’s shoes through simulation exercises and candid conversations.

Lehman walks participants through different scenarios that police face daily. He demonstrates how community members profile gang members and sometimes think like police without knowing it.

“We bring our participants inside of the uniform, and through that humanization process, we’re able to build trust,” Lehman said. “Through that trust, we’re able to build safer communities.”

His goal in creating the program is to reduce the number of violent confrontations between police and the public.

At the end of the program, Lehman hands out a blue silicone band inscribed with what he calls a life equation: “E + R = O.” Event plus reaction equals outcome.

It serves a dual purpose as a reminder to be mindful of how to react to situation, but it also bonds officers and community members by putting them in the same uniform. On Aug. 10, the program will host a fundraiser to offset the cost of the silicone bands and other giveaways received by participants in the Why’d You Stop Me? program.

By Lehman’s side are unlikely partners. A former gang member and a former addict and abuse victim work with Lehman and share their deeply personal stories of why they distrusted police and what changed their thinking.

“We’ve been fed this distrust of law enforcement for many years,” said Rodney Coulter, 54, who is a nonactive member of the Insane Crips and a recovering addict.

At the age of 17, Coulter discovered his mother and 15-year-old pregnant sister killed in a drug-related robbery. Although he had earlier encounters with police, the slayings sent Coulter’s life spiraling.

“I was raging. I was angry. I just didn’t care,” Coulter said.

From age 22 to age 50, Coulter was behind bars with only days- or weekslong respites between sentences. At 50, Coulter realized he needed to change while still in prison. He participated in every self-help program the prison offered and shunned the familiar prison gangs. He sees his participation in Why’d You Stop Me? as a way of making amends for his troubled past.

Coulter has spoken at more than a dozen events with Lehman at the Boys and Girls Club, high schools and criminal justice classes.

“I tell them that they have to learn to submit to authority,” Coulter, 54, said.

From the age of 7, Zeena Valenzuela built a distrust of police. At that young age, she witnessed her father bludgeon a man to death and saw police storm into her home, rifles drawn. Too young to understand, that moment formed a lasting impression that she would carry with her when she became an abused, stay-at-home mom, lived in a flophouse that harbored drugs and was kidnapped and gang-raped by 12 men.

“I didn’t build a sense of protection with them,” Valenzuela said. “I was too young to understand what was going on.”

While sitting on a bus bench at 11th Street and Redondo Avenue, she saw a patrol car drive by and hoped the officer would stop.

“Please turn around and save me from killing myself,” she silently thought. The officer stopped and talked with her on the way to the police station. That exchange became the catalyst for her turning her life around.

She later connected with Lehman, determined to devote her life to helping people recognize warning signs in their life and make better decisions.

“I just want to spend the rest of my time on this Earth giving back to children who aren’t as fortunate as my children,” she said.

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